Subash continued... > What puzzles me and distresses me so much is that for an organization > headed by an individual, Rob Hentzel (and with a few other members > whose commitment I can't question), who I know devotes an enormous > amount of time and effort to the final product, NAQT still manages > to put out such an inconsistent final set of questions. Is it the > written product that the editors get; ineptitude on the part of the > editors; a fundamental difference in question philosophy (with > regards to structure not distribution); a desire to inflate power TU > stats thereby adding some level of "excitement;" or simply that they > don't care. Now I know it's not the latter, and I know that NAQT > does not desire to have questions that solely progress in a linear > sense the way ACF usually desires. Meaning that I think that they > want some creativity; some of that puzzle aspect, which I have no > problem with. The inverse pyramid though, I dislike and I'm > confident that they do as well. NAQT wants to see a power conversion rate of 16%, not for excitement, but because a uniform distribution of buzzes on a question should, in theory, be maximally efficient for differentiating between teams. Clues that only one person at a tournament knows are not effective uses of time or paper :-). Thankfully, our statistical desires appear to be roughly in line with our "gut feeling" of what constitutes an elegant, notable buzz and an ordinary, simply correct buzz. NAQT's editors powermark based on the latter, game-play- related criterion and without regard to effecting an overall power rate. We're lucky that the overall result of that process is approximately what we would like to see. To the best of my knowledge, no NAQT question has ever been rewritten with the goal of creating more powers in a tournament. > The unfortunate conclusion then is that NAQT is getting too many > crappy questions from its writers; and its editors are not being > vigilant enough in weeding those questions out or doing a better job > in editing them to agreed upon levels of pyramidality. Case in > point (this is not a personal attack) - a couple of NAQT's question > writers are regarded with such ridicule that their NAQT ID numbers > are now syonymous with lousy questions in all formats. When I first > realized this was the case, I can't say that I was surprised as these > individuals' questions rarely ascend to the level of marginal and are > more frequently found in the arena of the craptacular. I know I plan > to write more questions to effect some change from within and I would > encourage those of you with similar complaints to do the same. I would like to second this notion: NAQT was founded by players and coaches with the goal of providing the best possible quiz bowl questions and tournaments for all levels of play. We look forward to experienced members of the circuit, including, but certainly not limited to, its top players, getting involved with NAQT as their playing careers wind down. We are always short of questions and would love to sign on experienced writers. We are always short on subject editors and we look forward to existing writers taking on those duties when they are comfortable with NAQT's internal systems. We are always short on set editors. We are always short on people to do operations, marketing, logistics, and administration. We would love to have people of all interests become more involved with NAQT, with some of them contributing sufficient amounts of time to eventually become members. Even people still playing in college can make a difference: By contributing to our high school, television, or intramural sets, you can free up NAQT members and editors to work on its SCT and ICT sets. I applaud Subash for wanting to make a difference in NAQT and look forward to his questions appearing in my editing queue. -- R. Robert Hentzel President and Chief Technical Officer, National Academic Quiz Tournaments, LLC
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